Lessons in Faith...

I've discovered at this point in my life a lot of lessons and messages seem to come from all sides.  Example... I'm sitting in church yesterday and yep...  the message comes clear as day from the message itself.  It's time for a lesson in faith again, my dear...  I find I have a tendency to think that once I've learned a lesson that it's done.  On one level I do realize that it's a continual learning process, but I think I kind of find myself suffering from the delusion that the lesson won't be as hard the next time.  Now granted...  That's true at times, but it seems that as hard as the initial step might have been sometimes the progress while easier in some ways becomes harder as life changes those lessons to something I have to learn exactly how the lessons learned apply to my new normal.  Sunday I found myself sitting in church listening to the message which pertained to Faith.  I found myself going back in time remembering some of the messages I heard in the church I had just begun attending and the lessons leading up to that transition in churches that took place a year and a half ago.  Sitting there I found myself realizing that at one time I lived with the mistaken belief that hearing about a topic multiple times from various sermons meant I was dropping the ball in some way.  I just wasn't getting it so that reminder had to keep coming and coming and coming.  I've since realized that's far from true.  It's not necessarily some failure on my part to get the message.  Sometimes it's that I learned the first lesson successfully and it's time to move on to the next one which is a deeper understanding of how that lesson applies to the next phase of my life.  It took the faith to believe that God had some greater purpose in mind to make the move in changing churches when it was the last thing I wanted in my life at the time.  It took that faith to move me on to the next phase of faith that occurred during some of the challenges presented during the beginning of my relationship with Dustin.  And now I believe Sunday was all about God showing me that I need the lessons from those experiences going into the world of wedding planning.  Faith that things will turn out just fine even when I'm feeling overwhelmed, out of control or completely exhausted.  The great thing I'm discovering is that even though Dustin can't step in and learn the lesson for me, he can be a great support while I'm dealing with the lesson of the moment.  There's a line in the hymn "Come Thou Fount" that says "Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I'm come".   When you look up the meaning Ebenezer (contrary to my young belief as a child does NOT refer to Ebenezer Scrooge...) refers to a stone of remembrance set out to commemorate a moment God helped Israel.  I suppose in a way I've come to see Dustin as my personal, living Ebenezer.  I look at him and know there was a time I never would have been able to handle the challenges that have gone into getting to this moment.  I know who I was and often I find myself thinking that's who I still am, but then Dustin serves as a reminder in so many ways of the changes God has brought to my life.  Oddly, enough Dustin serves as a very real reminder of the way faith has changed my life as so many of my life changing moments of faith include or involve him.  I believe with all my heart that God has given me Dustin and included him in those moments as a constant reminder of that faith that I can sometimes lose sight of, but it's up to me to remember those things when I look at him.  If the Israelites looked at their memorial and saw just a pile of stones it would never inspire them to the next victory.  In the same way I can look at Dustin and see just a man, a fiance, a future husband...  Or I can see a symbol of God's promise and a testimony to a faith I didn't know I could have.  It's really all up to me...